"We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on"
About this Quote
Feynman frames humanity as a young species, still learning its way, and urges patience without complacency. Calling our era the beginning of time shrinks our achievements to their proper scale and makes our frustrations understandable. Complex problems are not evidence of failure; they are the natural condition of a civilization in its infancy. The future, imagined across tens of thousands of years, reframes responsibility: we are not tasked with solving everything now, but with improving what we can and transmitting those improvements forward.
The line grew out of Feynmans reflections on the value of science after World War II, when the promise of discovery and the peril of nuclear weapons were tightly intertwined. He was skeptical of grand pronouncements and simple moral formulas. Instead he advocated for a culture of doubt, curiosity, and intellectual honesty. Progress, for him, was not a march to final answers but an iterative process of better approximations. That is why the verbs matter: do, learn, improve, pass on. They chart a humble but rigorous path that privileges method over certainty.
There is also a rebuke to despair and to utopian impatience. Expecting definitive solutions now misunderstands both our youth as a species and the nature of knowledge. The obligation is to make the next step more solid than the last, to leave not only results but also tools, methods, and habits of mind. Passing them on means cultivating institutions and norms that keep inquiry alive: transparency, reproducibility, the freedom to question.
Seen this way, responsibility is both modest and immense. Modest, because it focuses on incremental improvements within our reach. Immense, because those increments accumulate across centuries and shape the conditions of life for strangers we will never meet. The comfort is that we do not need to be final; the challenge is to be faithful stewards of a long human project.
The line grew out of Feynmans reflections on the value of science after World War II, when the promise of discovery and the peril of nuclear weapons were tightly intertwined. He was skeptical of grand pronouncements and simple moral formulas. Instead he advocated for a culture of doubt, curiosity, and intellectual honesty. Progress, for him, was not a march to final answers but an iterative process of better approximations. That is why the verbs matter: do, learn, improve, pass on. They chart a humble but rigorous path that privileges method over certainty.
There is also a rebuke to despair and to utopian impatience. Expecting definitive solutions now misunderstands both our youth as a species and the nature of knowledge. The obligation is to make the next step more solid than the last, to leave not only results but also tools, methods, and habits of mind. Passing them on means cultivating institutions and norms that keep inquiry alive: transparency, reproducibility, the freedom to question.
Seen this way, responsibility is both modest and immense. Modest, because it focuses on incremental improvements within our reach. Immense, because those increments accumulate across centuries and shape the conditions of life for strangers we will never meet. The comfort is that we do not need to be final; the challenge is to be faithful stewards of a long human project.
Quote Details
| Topic | Legacy & Remembrance |
|---|
More Quotes by Richard
Add to List
